Many fantasy and science fiction novels and movies have dealt with the concept of bending time through the years. Some have been good, some downright awful, but the theme has continued on into the twenty-first century in abundance. The remaking of Star Trek is one recent example where the plot hinges on time's fluidity.
Harry Potter is not without its time-turning magic. In fact, the plot of Prisoner of Azkaban would be pretty weak without it. The book flies by to a fateful day when Harry discovers the truth about Sirius Black and an unknown person emerges on the far end of the lake to cast a Patronus and save the day. For nearly 250 pages in POA we are given subtle clues that not all is what it seems, but Rowling has done that before. In the first two books, the character who seemed most likely to be causing the trouble (Snape, Malfoy) was not in fact behind it. So, perhaps we had good reasons to suspect not all was as it seemed with Sirius, and yet that is only the first in a series of curveballs that makes the last hundred pages of POA perhaps Rowling's best in the series.
When all is lost, Harry, Ron, and Hermione find themselves in the hospital wing, pleading with Dumbledore that they've got the wrong man. Nothing could be done--there was not enough time. Except Hermione has a secret. The time turner she possesses explains a good deal of the strange clues we got up to this point, but more than that it creates a secondary reality that makes us wonder: Wait, who is where? How are they both there? How did that happen after the fact--and yet before?
In short, Rowling blows our collective minds. This isn't time travel as some silly plot twist, as much as it is a puzzle of enormous complexity that unravels before our eyes into a reality that means we can no longer accept as straight-forward what the prose so simply describes. Life in the Wizarding World is complicated and beautiful.
And boy does Rowling use that to her advantage!
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